The moment the water hit her skin she forgot all about listening and heard herself scream. A thousand knives stabbed point first deep into her body, causing an indescribable agony, but along with that, white-hot flames burned along every nerve ending, sending conflicting messages through her. Her breath slammed out of her lungs as Sevastyan used a handheld sprayer to remove the blood that had seeped from her pores and coated her body. The tears she’d made in her skin where she’d torn strips off with her own fingernails when the pain was too severe and her leopard had been so desperate were on fire all over again.
“Stop, stop, you have to stop.” She wasn’t above begging. Tears burned in her eyes and she didn’t care that he saw.
“Almost over, baby, I’m sorry. I know it hurts.” It didn’t matter that he sounded soft and soothing, or that he wanted to hold her close and rock her.
She didn’t know what to feel. How to feel. Her body was insane. “I can’t take this. I really can’t. I can’t do this anymore, Sevastyan.” She couldn’t. He didn’t understand what it was like to be trapped in such an ugly cycle.
He turned off the water and lifted her again, his arms strong and tight. She hadn’t managed to open her eyes and she didn’t want to. She was too humiliated, afraid she was everything Mitya had implied. She was in agony and yet her body was desperate for sex. Burning. She couldn’t stop sobbing and she didn’t care that there were witnesses.
“Statistics show most are lost to suicide,” the other voice said. “No one can stay in that state for so long and survive. It’s so much worse for a shifter, particularly a female in a heat.”
“Well, that’s not happening to her,” Sevastyan declared, as if by his decree, she would obey. He sounded fierce.
He sank into the bath water, Flambé cradled in his arms as if she meant something to him. She felt as if she did when she was this close to him. It was so strange how he could make her feel that way, especially after being in the ropes. That was when he held her the tightest, the way the ropes did, locked to him, the pressure firm, not at all light, aggravating the sensation in her nerves. She braced herself as the water closed over her body, almost to her neck. Instead of hurting her, there seemed to be a soothing quality to it.
She tipped her face up and did her best to open her eyes, although that hurt even to make that small move.
“Don’t, Flambé. You need to rest up. There is no stopping Flamme. You can’t trap her in your body. She needs to emerge.”
The moment Sevastyan told her the truth she’d known all along, she panicked. She had done her best to help Flamme, but in the end, the pain was too great and her leopard had backed off to spare her.
“It will kill both of us. It would be kinder to just euthanize us like they do animals.” She said it to the doctor. “I tried. I couldn’t stand the pain. I’m really tough, but I couldn’t do it, not even for her.”
Her fingernails dug into Sevastyan’s arm. She didn’t want to start crying again. It seemed as if she’d been crying for hours. Her head hurt, but that was because her skull felt too big, pushing and pushing, just like her jaw. Everything ached. Every joint. Every muscle. How did women do this? How did any shifter do it?
“No one is going to euthanize you, Flambé,” Sevastyan said. His soothing voice was gone and his firm, commanding tone was very much in evidence. “Just relax and rest. I’m here, the doctor is going to give us both instructions and we’re going to get you through this. He does need you to answer a few questions. They’re very important and we might not have a lot of time. Try to concentrate, baby.” One hand began to massage her scalp.
“Did you try the shots to help you with clotting?”
Flambé turned her head toward the voice. She managed to pry her eyes open enough to see a man sitting across the room staring at a computer screen, not at her. The lights were off in the room, which helped considerably. “No, my father said they wouldn’t work. My mother had tried something like that and they didn’t work for her.”